Dr. William Shivers is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. His work approaches culturally and ecologically significant plant species as a means to agitate standardized narratives, constructs, and practices of the constructed environment. His interests lie in cultural landscapes, the environmental humanities, political ecology, and climate adaptation.

William completed his Ph.D in the Constructed Environment at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture under landscape historian Michael G. Lee. His dissertation produced a unique biography of landscape through an exploration of the creation, expansion, and maintenance of the American periphery. Centered around ‘Ohi’a Lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha) in Hawai’i this work created a novel approach to landscape history and analysis through design research methods.

Dr. Shivers has taught graduate studios at the University of Virginia and was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Auburn University where he taught studios and core courses across the undergraduate and graduate programs. He has practiced at STOSS Landscape Urbanism where he led community engagement for Boston’s Moakley Park in addition to working with Merrit/Chase, the World Monuments Fund, Reed Hilderbrand, and SWA.

Dr. Shivers’s work has been published in Places, Landscape Architecture Frontiers, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. He has presented his work at the Responsive Cities Symposium, Architectural Humanities Research Association, the Conference on Landscape Architecture, among many others. William was also a 2022 Fellow at the Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory at the University of Bologna.

William earned a Master of Landscape Architecture with Distinction from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design where he received the ASLA Award of Merit for academic excellence and a national student ASLA Award for Residential Design. He also holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Louisiana State University where he was awarded the ASLA Award of Honor for academic excellence and a national student ASLA Award for Analysis and Planning.